Climate change could influence the Colorado Mountain hail to disappear in a warmer future

Summertime hail could all but disappear from the eastern flank of Colorado's Rocky Mountains by 2070, says a new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Colorado Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Less hail damage could be good news for gardeners and farmers, said lead author Kelly Mahoney, a research scientist at CIRES, but a shift from hail to rain can also mean more runoff, which could raise the risk of flash floods. "In this region of elevated terrain, hail may lessen the risk of flooding because it takes a while to melt," Mahoney said. "Decision makers may not want to count on that in the future". For the new study, published in the journal Natural Climate Change, Mahoney and her colleagues used "downscaling" techniques to try to understand how climate change might affect hail-producing weather patterns across Colorado.

 Source: Terragreen